We Still Haven't Managed to Outgrow the Chick-Flick Moment
by Leahelisabeth
Summary: Danger on a snowy mountainside could tear the brothers apart for good or maybe it will take them back to a place they haven't been for years. Fic for comment fic meme on Ohsam for sailoreyes67. Full prompt is inside. Expect lots of hurt/limp!Sam. Also, I couldn't help throwing in a little bit of fix-it for those who are disatisfied with the current direction of the season.


Hey! I'm back! Unfortunately, I still don't own anything.

This is based on a prompt by sailoreyes67 on LJ at the ohsam hurt/comfort comment fic meme. It is as follows: A small avalanche falls on Sam. Nothing truly catastrophic, please, but enough to trap him and maybe break a few bones. But Dean doesn't know where he is, what happened, so he has to wait a while getting colder and colder and trying to dig himself out. And maybe he can hear Dean tromping around, calling for him, and he really wants to answer but by then he's just so tired, and he's just going to wait and either Dean will find him or he won't-he doesn't really care anymore... Bonus points for a schmoopy ending involving hot chocolate with whiskey in it and lots of cuddles. ;) Also bonus points for tears at some point.

I set this sometime mid season 8. I hope you all enjoy!

.~o()o .

"Remind me again why we're out here in the cold," whined Dean.

Sam turned to look at his brother and snickered. Dean was bundled up with at least four sweaters under his parka, gloves lined with lambs wool, a striped scarf and one of those fur lined hats with the ear flaps. All Sam could see of him were his pitiful green eyes and the tip of his bright red nose. "It's a Winter elemental, Dean.; the operative word in that sentence being WINTER. If it was warm, we wouldn't have to be here. Do you need to go wait in the car while a real man finishes the job?" Sam mocked as he stood there, not even shivering in his jacket.

"No need to flaunt it, ya freakin' Yeti…just because we're in your natural habitat…" Dean muttered.

"Har-de-har-har, Dean. You keep right on making excuses. We all know you're just a wimp," Sam laughed, striding a little farther up the slope.

Dean scowled and stopped under a ledge of rock that overhung the path, tugging at his pants, "Stupid thermal underwear, giving me a freaking wedgie." He struggled to readjust without taking his mitts off.

"Hurry up, Princess!" Sam shouted from about 20 yards up the path. "We've got a couple kilometres to go yet and I want to banish this thing and get off the mountain before dark."

"Yeah, yeah, yeah," Dean muttered under his breath, trying and failing once more to pick his astronomical wedgie. He and Sam had been sniping at each other for months, since he had gotten back from Purgatory, and now Sam was doing this freaking over-compensating thing where he tried to prove that even though he had taken a year off hunting, he was still Mr. Hunter Supreme. Frankly, Dean was sick and tired of the whole thing, but he was always the one to crack first, always the one to apologize, always the one to forgive. This time, it was Sam's turn.

He thought it was thunder at first, the rumbling that vibrated deep into his bones. He sighed, preparing himself to step back out from under the shelter of the ledge into the full force of the elements, cursing Sam for dragging him out in this.

"Dean!" Sam shouted, real fear in his voice. Dean looked up to see his little brother sprinting toward the shelter over the path. It took an instant to figure out why Sam looked terrified and that was an instant too long. Dean froze and saw his brother disappear, tumbling away in a wave of snow.

"SAMMY!" He shouted, and moved to run to where his brother had vanished but a wall of snow came down inches from his face, cascading over the overhang and walling him in on all sides. Seconds later, all was silent.

.~o()o~.

Sam didn't have time to think. He heard the rumbling, saw his brother standing under the only viable shelter for miles and he just started running. He had covered half the distance when the snow hit him. At first, it felt like his short stint on the Stanford football team. It knocked him over and stole his breath, painful, but survivable. Then he just kept tumbling. Every time he tried to draw a breath, snow filled his mouth and another ice chunk slammed into his chest or throat. He didn't know which way was up. Once, he got trapped for a short time in the branches of a fir tree. He grappled for a hold, to pull himself out of the flood but the snow grabbed him again, tearing his grip from the tree with the cracking and splintering of bone. It felt like years before he finally stopped, every inch of his body throbbing in pain. One arm was above his head, miraculously trapping a pocket of air for him to breathe. His other arm was stuck fast along his body. He tried to pull it out and for the first time, one of his aches and pains rose enough to drown out the general complaint of his body. He screamed as his arm exploded into white-hot pain. He was glad he couldn't see it. The way it felt, it must be a damn corkscrew. He screamed again, his throat raw and swollen from one too many tree limbs to the neck. He couldn't take a full breath and his overwhelmed body soon subsided into unconsciousness.

.~o()o~.

The moment the snow settled, Dean was attacking it. There was no way he was staying trapped in this cave for any longer than he needed to be, not when Sam was out there in who knows what kind of shape. It took him far too long to dig out a big enough hole to haul himself out of the cave but the moment he thought he could squeeze out, he was hauling himself out onto the changed landscape.

"SAMMY!" he shouted, hoping against hope that maybe his brother had managed to escape the worst of the flow. No shaggy head popped up out of the alien landscape and Dean was overwhelmed with fear. He could walk right past Sam, just a few feet above where he was buried in the snow and he might never know it. He scrambled over the mounds of snow and ice to where he thought Sam was when the avalanche first took him and, started following the snow's path downhill.

He shouted for his brother ever so often, straining to hear Sam's voice whenever he was silent and he painstakingly made his way own the mountain. He had a moment of hope when he saw a lone fir tree that had been able to withstand the onslaught approximately where Sam must have been taken. He dug down a few feet, deep enough to find torn branches, one of Sam's gloves and something that nearly made his heart stop, the darkness of blood. He dug faster but found no further sign of his brother. He was so afraid, terrified even, that Sam was gone and they never got a chance to fix what went wrong.

"SAM!" he shouted again, listening for an absent reply and then pulled himself out of the hole, gambling that Sam had not been able to hold on and had been swept further down. Slowly, he stumbled on.

.~o()o~.

He would deny it vehemently later, but Sam woke up crying. He wasn't sure if it was the pain, the cold or simply because his head was so much lower than his feet but tears were freezing on his cheeks. He tried to move his free arm to wipe them away but when he shifted, the snow threatened to collapse his little air bubble and he didn't dare continue. He couldn't know how long he had been out but he hoped it had been long enough for Dean to dig himself out and come looking. He had teased Dean unmercifully about his hat and scarf and long underwear but he was regretting it now as the cold sunk into his bones.

That wasn't the only thing he was regretting. Over the last few months, he had treated his brother terribly, first by not looking for him when Dean was in purgatory, second by trying to make him feel like it was all his fault. Now that he was faced with the prospect of dying here in the snow, he realized what he had been doing. He had been holding out on Dean, waiting for Dean to apologize because then maybe it would make the debt he owed his brother somehow less. If Dean had something to atone for, maybe someday they could be even. But he couldn't avoid it anymore. It was his fault and his alone that Dean had been stuck there for a year with no one looking for him and he could never make that right.

He grinned with swollen lips and let loose with another flood of tears when he heard his brother's voice, muffled though it was by layers of snow, crying out his name. He tried to yell back but the snow had packed around his chest, making it impossible for him to draw a full breath and even when he had filled his lungs to their current capacity he could barely do more than squeak through his badly swollen throat. He kept trying but there was no use, the more he yelled, the less voice he could get out. That left one recourse, digging himself out. By concentrating, he realized he could move his left foot a fraction of an inch. He pushed and pulled, his abused muscles screaming at him to stop, but he could feel the snow around his foot and calf growing looser. Soon Dean's voice came from above him and he felt an outside force hit his foot, then clawing hands clearing the snow and digging downward, Dean's voice still shouting frantically.

He managed to wiggle his foot one more time before deciding perhaps it wasn't so cold after all. Dean could deal with the rest. Dean always did.

.~o()o~.

Dean was about ready to kill someone a half hour later. There was no sign of Sam anywhere and he hardly knew where to start digging. He couldn't excavate this entire hill by himself but he couldn't bear to take the time required to get off the mountain to call for help. Sam could very well be dead by then. He could very well be dead now.

He had almost resolved to turn around and try a different angle when he tripped and landed flat on his face. He scrambled to his feet and aimed to kick the offending object that had the audacity to get in the way of his feet when he realized he recognized it, Sam's shoe! As he looked at it, it moved imperceptibly. Sam was alive!

Dean threw himself to his knees and started digging. One good thing about the leather monstrosities keeping his hands warm, they doubled as great shovels. It took too long to get down to the end of Sam's long body. He had been trapped almost perpendicular to the slope. It was a miracle that even that small part of him had been showing. Finally, Dean managed to pull Sam to the surface.

Sam's eyes fluttered open once his head was safely ensconced in Dean's lap. "You found me," he croaked as a fresh flood of tears froze on his face.

"Well duh," Dean smiled, relief making his voice rough. "Now stop crying, princess, you're getting icicles,' he smirked. "Get it? 'Eye'cicles?"

Sam rolled his eyes but it was enough to make the tears stop flowing.

"That's my boy," Dean said fondly. "Now let's get you off this mountain before you turn into a Samcicle."

It was a long, slow journey. Sam was cold and barely with it. Dean knew they weren't going to get away without a hospital trip, especially after seeing Sam's arm. His jacket sleeve was practically coated with blood and Sam nearly passed out when he tried to roll up his jacket sleeve to look at it. There was no way he was going to cut his sleeve off while they were still on the mountain so the most Dean could do was take off one of his extra sweaters and rig a sling to immobilize it. When they finally reached the Impala, Sam's knees were buckling with every step and every breath came out in a whimper.

It took Dean far less time to strip Sam out of his cold, wet jeans and cut his bloody jacket and shirt off him, stuff him in the back of the car with every blanket and dry item of clothing they owned and racing off to the ski lodge at the bottom of the mountain. Snow had started falling when they reached the car and the cold, clear day was rapidly evolving into a blizzardy night. He knew the nearest hospital was at least 200 miles over treacherous roads. He ran into the lobby of the lodge, shouting to the sleepy desk attendant to call a chopper and ran back out to get his brother.

Sam was asleep in the back and Dean hated to wake him, but there was warmth and comfort in the lobby. They had big leather couches even long enough for a Sasquatch and even more blankets.

Sam protested when Dean tried to move him.

"No…wan' stay 'ere," he mumbled when Dean tried to manoeuvre his limp form into a sitting position.

"Sammy, you can't stay out here. It's warm inside and the chopper can't take off until the wind dies down," he again tried to get Sam out of the car.

"M'fine here. Th'impala's home. Please," Sam looked at Dean over the blanket, his hair tousled and his puppy-dog eyes used to devastating effect. Dean could feel himself caving.

"Fine," he rolled his eyes. "But not like this." He ran back into the lodge to grab a few hot water bottles, another stack of blankets and a travel mug of hot chocolate, liberally laced with whiskey from his flask.

Dean crawled into the backseat, lifting Sam's head and settling it back onto his lap. He spread the hot water bottles under the blankets and practically mummified Sam, then he lifted his head to feed him the hot chocolate.

Sam took a couple sips and colour finally began to come back into his cheeks. He had been shivering unmercifully but he thought maybe he was starting to warm up. Secretly, he thought it was less to do with the blankets and the drink than it was to finally feel close to his big brother again, He was just drifting off to sleep again when he remembered.

"Dean!" he struggled to sit up, earning another spike of pain from his broken arm

"Whoa, hey Sammy, where's the fire. Settle back before you hurt yourself," Dean pushed him gently back down to his lap before stroking his hair, obviously trying to put Sam back to sleep in the same way he had when Sam was a child.

Sam looked up into Dean's worried face, eyes filling with tears again. "I'm sorry, Dean."

"For getting hit by an avalanche?" Dean laughed softly. "It's not like you planned it."

"No, Dean," Sam cried. "for not looking for you when you were in Purgatory. I could have done it. I could have gotten you out. I should have figured out where you were. There was a tiny part of me that guessed but…" he stopped to take a stuttering breath. "But no more excuses. I should have but I didn't. You always look for me and you always find me and I've never saved you from anything. I don't deserve you, Dean." Sam turned his head into Dean's abdomen and sobbed.

"Hey, hey, hey," Dean grabbed Sam's chin so he could look at him. "Obviously the whiskey was a bad idea. Apparently we still haven't managed to outgrow the chick-flick moment. I forgive you, you moron. I admit, I was hurt when I found out you didn't look for me, and I have been taking it out on you ever since but honestly, I realized today that even though we've done nothing but hurt each other since I got back, we were once again given a do-over. I mean, we've probably had, like, six more than the legal limit but something out there seems to see fit to give Sam and Dean Winchester another chance to get things right. While I was searching through the snow, I couldn't bear the thought that once again we messed it up. I mean, we are already living on borrowed time. The next time we die could be our last. I'm kinda hoping, when that day comes, we go out together, as brothers," he laughed, trying to surreptitiously wipe away the tears from his own eyes. "Or, failing that, maybe we can at least go out as sisters."

Sam laughed, his eyes already closing of their own volition. Dean sat there for the next three hours, running his fingers through Sam's long brown hair, his legs slowly growing numb from the weight of Sam's head, the hot chocolate forgotten and growing cold on the floor. He didn't regret one minute of it. He was a little sad when the sound of chopper blades split the night air and the bustling of paramedics broke into their little cocoon, but he knew it would be okay. He knew they would be okay.

.~o()o~.

Hope you all enjoyed! It feels good to be back! Please review. It might motivate me to get back to my WIPs.


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